Collections

Selections from the Museum’s collections are organized here in three groups: Beyond the Facade focuses on elements of our landmark home, the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue. From Ellis to Eldridge looks at material relating to the immigrant men and women who came together to form the synagogue’s congregation, and looks at their experiences as Eastern European Jews in America, and at the Lower East Side neighborhood in which they lived, worked and prayed. Ways We Worship includes religious objects used during services at Eldridge Street and elsewhere in the neighborhood, as well as at personal items used by congregants during prayer. Many of the objects described here are on display at the Museum.

Follow the links below to see objects from the Museum’s collections:

Beyond the Façade

The art and architecture of the Eldridge Street Synangogue

The Museum’s primary asset is our home, the magnificent Eldridge Street Synagogue. We consider the building’s various elements as a curator would a collection of artwork or artifacts. By looking closely at the synagogue’s design and decoration we can better understand the beliefs and aspirations of the Lower East Side community who gathered here and who made changes to the building over time.

Opened in 1887, the Eldridge Street Synagogue is the first great house of worship built by East European Jews in America. It is now a National Historic Landmark. The architects were Peter and Francis Herter, German Catholic tenement builders who had never before worked on a sacred site. Together with the congregation, they created a structure that expressed pride in the community’s Jewish identity and new status in America. Additions were made in the years that followed reflecting the congregation’s changing tastes, traditions and economic reality.

By the 1950s, as the congregation’s size and assets dwindled, the building’s main sanctuary was closed off and left to the elements. With the founding of the Eldridge Street Project in 1986, a 25-year, $18.5 million restoration was begun, involving many critical preservation decisions. In the fall of 2010, the final element of this restoration was completed with the installation of a new stained glass window by contemporary artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans. The story of the building has many chapters and is ever-evolving.

Click on the pictures below to see objects from the Museum’s collections:

Ways We Worship

Jewish Ritual and Practice

What does Jewish worship look like? The objects featured here explore Jewish culture and ritual as practiced by generations of Jews, many of them recent immigrants, who worshipped at the Eldridge Street Synagogue since its founding in 1887. The Museum’s collection holds objects used during services at Eldridge Street as well as at neighboring synagogues that no longer exist.

Click on the pictures below to look at these objects of religious practice: elements of the synagogue itself that are significant during services; the Torah, which is central to Jewish belief; and ornaments that are used to embellish and glorify the Torah.

From Ellis to Eldridge

Immigrant history

Many of the founding members of the Eldridge Street Synagogue were immigrants who came straight from Ellis Island to the Lower East Side. How did they come to terms with American ideas about government, business, entertainment and religion while still respecting Jewish law and traditions? Rather than leaving one way of life behind and adopting another, they created something new that was the result of their experience being Eastern European Jews forming a new community in America. This new culture was defined by looking back at old country traditions and forward to the freedoms, customs, innovations and even hardships encountered in their adopted home.

Click on the pictures below to look at objects relating to the men and women who came together to form congregation Kahal Adath Jeshurun and erect the Eldridge Street Synagogue, and to see objects from the Lower East Side neighborhood, where they lived, worked and worshipped.